CASE 4 - Legal Compliance and Discipline and Grievance

In this blog writing, I am going to study legal compliance and discipline and grievance at workplace and how different situations can be handled. 

In the study I am going to use three different cases:

In the case A, a police inspector was charged with sexually abusing female officer in 2016 in New York. The sexual abuse was about touching, official misconduct and harassment which happened at the office of the suspect Keith Walton. The victim attempted to push Walton´s hands away and told him to stop. Walton although denies the allegations. Later, the inspector was relieved of his gun and badge and placed on a modified duty. Months later Walton was promoted as a deputy inspector. (Mele and Baker 2016.)

In this case what I think happened was that Walton made a deal with his supervisor or another employer of his to stay in the job and avoid any other consequences in addition to the charges. The victim, female officer, did not get justice or that´s what I made as a conclusion from the article. The case was kind of buried in favor of Walton.

The case B presented a situation happened at a restaurant in Denver. In a Mexican restaurant, a customer received a receipt which stated hate words written by the employee. This has not been the only case where this kind of insulting has happened. This kind of situations have killed careers, destroyed businesses and started lawsuits. And this kind of behavior goes both ways, also customers had offended employees, especially at diners.
Experts say that this kind of behavior is due to social media or perhaps, lack of training at workplace. In America, the jobs in the restaurant business can pay very low compensation, yet the job demands great professionalism in customer service and dealing with different kind of customers.  (McCarthy 2016.)

In the B case, I think that the problems are faced also because of the lack of training at workplace, but there just simply is people who cannot behave or leave things unsaid. And what I think about the social media impact on the situation is that social media provokes people to talk whatever they want and not face consequences. This does not work the same way in real life, it is not anonymous when for example a waitress writes offensively about his/her customer. So employees could be trained better and also trained about the consequences of inappropriate behavior (discipline). 

The case C described a situation where a family from Flint, Michigan discovered that there is a poisoning amount of lead in the tap water. Lee Anne Walters, as mother of her sons which both were diagnosed with lead poisoning, has been a spokesperson in the city about the problem. Later her husband, a sailor in US Navy, has faced harassment and mistreatment at his workplace due to his wife's advocacy in the water crisis. Dennis Walters have requested a transfer to another unit within the Navy. The Navy has not responded to any comment requests. (Kaufman and Ganim 2016.)

Protesters in Flint, Michigan on water crisis

This case regarding the water crisis in Flint was very disruptive to me, I do not understand why Dennis Walters was mistreated at his workplace when his wife was trying to defend the citizens´ rights. The case was left quite open because the Navy does not want to comment on the issue. One possibility could be that the Navy has something to do with the water being contaminated by lead and they wanted to keep Dennis Walters away from the case since he might reveal some details about the contamination. Or US Navy might use Dennis´ wife's involvement in the water crisis as an excuse to eventually discharge him if they have wanted to fire him for other reasons which are not adequate.

According to European Agency for Safety and Health at work, bullying can also be result in organizational culture, poor relationships between employees and supervisors, extreme levels of work demands and abrupt organizational change.

Employee and employer rights

An employee has statutory rights, meaning right to form an union and protection against discrimination. Specific laws are applied to these employee rights. Employees´ contractual rights include right to employment contract and contract with the union. These rights are controlled by law of contracts. Other rights employees have are for instance right to ethical treatment, free speech (limited) and privacy (limited). (Gomez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 458.)

Employment contract as a right of an employee

Employer rights contain right to run the business and to retain any profits that result and right to manage the workforce and hire employees. Also employer has rights to promote, assign, discipline and discharge employees. These rights are monitored by the discrimination law, for instance. (Gomez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 462.) In conclusion, employer has rights to make decision affecting the business and workers within but limited by laws and contracts.

Discipline types and processes

There are mainly two types of discipline practices done by supervisors; progressive and positive discipline. Progressive discipline consists of series of management interventions, giving the employee a chance to correct his/her behavior. Positive discipline encourages employees to monitor their own behavior and responsibility is assumed to be taken by the employee on their actions. Positive discipline focuses on motivating the employee to learn from his/her mistakes and make a plan for correcting it. In positive discipline collaborative problem solving is the key to success. (Gomez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 473-474.)

Processes presented by Gomez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy (2016, 473-474)
In progressive discipline the process could be as follows:
1. Verbal warning given to an employee regarding his/her actions.
2. Written warning follows if the verbal warning was not effective as correcting the behavior.
3. Suspension can take place for a certain time if warnings are not enough.
4. Discharge is the last step if warnings and suspension do not correct the situation.

In positive discipline the process could be as follows:
1. Counselling session takes place with a goal to solve the problem occurred.
2. New counselling is required if the first one was not effective.
3. Warning of discharge and also time (for instance one day off) could be given to employee to come up with a solution to the situation.
4. Discharge, if nothing mentioned above works.

Employee ´discipline´ in action

Discipline standards

Before the employer decides to discipline the employee, he/she should consider few important things effecting the situation. The manager should consider the standards of discipline used for determining if the employee is treated fairly with the disciplining, if the employee has right to appeal actions of discipline, communication rules and performance criteria and rule awareness among the employees. In order to successfully discipline an employee, documentation of convincing evidence is important to that there are even grounds for discipline. (Gomez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 476.)

Summary

From these cases we can learn that there can be many different kind of situations, even very complicated ones, regarding the legal compliance and discipline and grievance. And some cases will never be solved or justice is not served to the right people. There still are some tools the employers can use regarding discipline, and employees and employers have their own rights under employment. It is important as an employee to know one´s rights so that even difficult situations could be solved fairly in favor of each party.


References

Gómez-Mejía L., Balkin D., Cardy R. 2016. Managing Human Resources. Pearson Education Limited. Harlow. Accessed 2.10.2018.

Case 4A: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/nyregion/new-york-police-sexual-abuse-of-officer.html?_r=0. Accessed 2.10.2018
Case 4B: https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/receipt-rage-why-food-is-being-served-with-a-side-of-hate. Accessed 2.10.2018
Case 4C: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/29/health/whistleblower-complaint-us-navy-flint/index.html. Accessed 2.10.2018

Case C picture: https://sites.tufts.edu/caitlinjosephcommunicates/2016/01/29/flint-mi-water-crisis-a-media-analysis/
Employment contract picture: https://www.allenlawaz.com/employment-contract-conflicts-new-az-employee-rights-law/
Employee discipline picture: http://karenlusby.com/three-reasons-self-discipline-fails/

EU OSHA Bullying at work: 
https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/HRM1LF101%20Basics%20of%20Human%20Resource%20Management/Materials/Course%20Readings/EU%20OSHA%20Factsheet%2023%20Bullying%20at%20work.pdf?slrid=2482949e-8029-7000-5935-8eb3d0d17f49. Accessed 2.10.2018